Juan Cole

Who is Hasan Ghul? The Kurdish peshmergas apprehended an Egyptian member of al-Qaeda trying to sneak into Iraq recently, and the US hailed the capture as significant. Ghul was said to have been working directly under Khalid Shaikh Muhammad, one of the planners of September 11. But the London-based moderate Saudi newspaper al-Hayat raised the […]

Is Kerry’s Inconsistency on Iraq a Liability? Mother Jones,, rather unaccountably relying on Max Boot, raises the question of whether Kerry’s changing Iraq position will hurt him in the campaign. Kerry voted for the congressional authorization of the war, but then voted against Bush’s request for $87 billion more after the war ($20 bn. for […]

Bahr al-Ulum: Federalism can work with 18 Provinces In a recent interview in al-Siyasah, a Kuwaiti newspaper, Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum implicitly opposed the Iraqi Kurds’ demands for a consolidated Kurdish state: “(Bilal) Do you think federalism is good for Iraq?” “(Bahr-al-Ulum) First of all we do not accept the division of Iraq or any situation […]

Hilfiker on Army Strong-Arm Tactics in Sunni Heartland Dr. David Hilfiker of the Christian Peacemaker Team has written an important account, presented by Tom Engelhardt, of the tactics employed by Col. Nate Sassaman in dealing with Sunni Arab Iraqis. Sassaman is alleged to have said several things about Iraqi Muslims that verge on racism, and […]

John LeCarre on Iraq Intelligence Failure From Laura Miller’s recent interview in Salon.com with the famed spy novelist David Cornwell and former British foreign service officer: “I think it’s perfectly true that after the Cold War ended and the secret war against terror and the business of spying on terror got going, as always the […]

10 Members of Iraqi Civil Defense Force wounded in Blast Guerrillas in the northeastern town of Baquba donated a big bomb, targeting a patrol of the Iraqi Civil Defense Force, and wounding 10 of them, according to Reuters.

10,000 Shiites Protest in Nasiriyah, seek Resignation of Provincial Council Az-Zaman newspaper reports that Muqtada al-Sadr’s organization staged a demonstration of 10,000 in the southern Shiite city of Nasiriyah on Wednesday. They were joined by the Fudala’ Party, also adherents of the martyred Sadiq al-Sadr, but who follow Muhammad Yaqubi rather than Muqtada, Sadiq’s son. […]

Pachachi Envisages Triumvirate as Iraqi Executive AFP/al-Zaman report that Adnan Pachachi, the octogenarian interim president of the Iraqi Governing Council, envisages that the new transitional Iraqi government due to be installed July 1 will have a three-man executive. He said that the transitional parliament will elect the three presidents. He also insisted that the three-man […]

Hutton Inquiry Whitewashes Blair Government’s Exaggerations Seumas Milne of the Guardian argues that the report by Lord Hutton on the David Kelly affair is biased in favor of the government of Tony Blair. This affair is extremely complex. Let me see if I can get it basically right, in a concise way. David Kelly, a […]